Defeat Comics: National Lampoon August 1971

Defeat Comics

from National Lampoon, August 1971

The My Lai Massacre, which took place on March 16, 1968, and resulted in the deaths of some 504 South Vietnamese civilians, was very much in the news in 1971, when in March of that year a court-martial found Second Lieutenant William Laws Calley Jr. guilty of murder and sentenced him to life in prison.

Calley subsequently was freed in 1974, but the counterculture - of which National Lampoon was a part - used the My Lai massacre to heighten its condemnation of the Vietnam War.

The August, 1971 issue of the Lampoon went all-out with mordant, militant humor over the Vietnam War, with Frank Kelly Freas commissioned to provide a cover portrait of William Calley, as merged with 'Alfred E. Neumann' from Mad magazine.

Inside, writer Michael O'Donoghue provided 'Defeat Comics', a vicious satire of the war comics from Marvel, DC, and Charlton then circulating on newsstands. O'Donoghue teamed up with George Trow and artist 'Crag W. Granite', a pseudonym for the established comics artist Frank Springer. Heightening the comic's subversive sensibility was the fact that Springer did artwork for Marvel comics, including Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

With its depictions of all-American boys morphed into G.I.s who are war profiteers, junkies, stoners, and antiwar activists, 'Defeat Comics' encapsulated the counterculture's attitude towards the war.......... and was laugh-out-loud funny in the bargain. 

Although the faux advertisement for 'Lt. Calley's Kill the Children Foundation', and 'Madame Ky's Puzzle Page', are ghoulishly over-the-top.......